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David Mallet
David Mallet (?1705 - 21 April 1765) was a Scottish poet and playwright. Life Overview Mallet was educated at Crieff parish school and the University of Edinburgh, where he became acquainted with James Thomson, and in 1723 went to London as tutor in the family of the Duke of Montrose. In the following year appeared his ballad of "William and Margaret," by which he is chiefly remembered, and which made him known to Pope, Young, and others. In 1726 he changed his name to Mallet to make it more pronounceable by Southern tongues. His Excursion, an imitation of Thomson, was published in 1728. At the request of the Prince of Wales, whose secretary he had become, he wrote with Thomson a masque, Alfred (1740), in which 1st appeared "Rule Britannia" (which, although he claimed the authorship, is now generally attributed to Thomson). He also wrote a Life of Bacon; and on Bolingbroke bequeathing to him his manuscripts and library, he published an edition of his works (1754). On the accession of George III., Mallet became a zealous supporter of Lord Bute, and was rewarded with a sinecure. In addition to the works above named Mallet. wrote some indifferent dramas, including Eurydice, Mustapha, and Elvira. Dr. Johnson said of him that he was "the only Scotsman whom Scotsmen did not commend."John William Cousin, "Malet, David," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 255. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 9, 2018. Youth Mallet was born David Malloch near Crieff in Perthshire, probably the second son of James Malloch of Dunruchan, a well-to-do tenant-farmer on Lord Drummond's Perthshire estate, a Roman Catholic, and a member of the outlawed clan Macgregor. His mother's Christian name was Beatrix, but her surname is unknown. The household was on intimate terms with the Drummond family, and suffered with them during the troubles of 1715 and 1745.Smith, 425. David, who gave his age as 28 in 1733 (ib.), and was therefore born about 1705, seems to have been educated at the parish school of Crieff under John Ker, afterwards classical master in the high school of Edinburgh and professor at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In 1717 he was acting as janitor in the high school of Edinburgh at a salary of 20l. Scots per annum. In 1720 he became resident tutor to the sons of Mr. Home of Dreghorn, in return for "learning, clothes, and diet, but no fixed salary." He held the post till 1723, studied at the same time at the University of Edinburgh (1721–1723), and formed a friendship with a fellow-student, James Thomson, author of The Seasons. In July 1723 he accepted the post of tutor to the sons of the Duke of Montrose, at a salary of 30l. per annum. Leaving the university without a degree, he went in August to London, and thence to the duke's seat at Shawford, near Winchester. He lived on good terms with the family till 1731, residing chiefly at London and Shawford. Early in 1727 he made a continental tour with his pupils; and he was again abroad in 1735. Literary career Mallet had published a "Pastoral" in the Edinburgh Miscellany in 1720; and during his college days, emulating the example of Allan Ramsay, who had just "wrote himself into some kind of fame," and probably under Thomson's influence, he produced a number of short pieces, including an imitation of Milton, entitled "The Transfiguration," first published in the Edinburgh Magazine in 1793. Shortly before his engagement with the Montrose family he composed the ballad of "William and Margaret" (see Ramsay's Poems, ed. 1877, ii. 283), which was published first anonymously in black-letter, and afterwards in 1724, in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, i. 143, and Aaron Hill's Plain Dealer, No. 36. Further short poems followed, mostly written for his friend Professor Ker; and in February 1725 he wrote verses on Mira, "a very fine woman," the Clio of his friend Thomson. For Thomson's poem on ‘Winter,’ published in March 1726, he wrote a dedication to Sir Spencer Compton (Spence, Anecdotes), and some verses for the second edition (Thomson, Poems, i. xl, clx). He had himself written, early in 1725, a poem on the same subject, which was praised by Thomson; and on his return from the continent he prepared for the press ‘The Excursion,’ in two books, which he had written in 1726. On 5 Sept. 1724 Mallet wrote to Ker that he had been advised to change his name and to adopt the form Mallet, ‘for there is not one Englishman that can pronounce’ Malloch. ‘Old surly’ Dennis's jest on Moloch had probably no little influence on his decision (cf. ‘Mallock’ in the list of names in Dennis, Miscellaneous Tracts, 1727). He first figures as Mallet in the list of subscribers' names in Savage's ‘Miscellanies,’ 1726; but in the introductory verses and preface to the second edition of Thomson's Winter he was still called Malloch, though Thomson then writes of him as Mallet. Dr. Johnson, "an unforgiving enemy," remarked in his octavo edition of the Dictionary, "alias means otherwise, as Mallet alias Malloch, that is, otherwise Malloch" (cf. Boswell, iv. 217, v. 127).Smith, 426. On 22 February 1730–1731 Mallet produced his tragedy of Eurydice at Drury Lane, with a prologue and epilogue by Aaron Hill. It was acted about 13 times, and was revived with poor success in 1759. Towards the close of the year he left the Montrose family, and went to Gosfield in Essex, to act as tutor to the stepson of John Knight, to whose wife, formerly Mrs. Newsham, he had been recommended by Pope. Pope evinced some regard for him — because of his "love of adulation and adulators," says Cooke — and Mallet showed his appreciation by the publication of his poem on "Verbal Criticism" (1733), in which he ridiculed Theobald. On 2 November he, with his pupil, matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he resided fairly regularly till 27 September 1734. On 5 March following he received, at his request, the degree of M.A. from the University of Edinburgh, and on the 15th of that month he graduated B.A., and on 6 April M.A. of the university of Oxford. Mallet advanced his interest by the tragedy of Mustapha, produced at Drury Lane on 13 Feb. 1738-9. The prologue was by Thomson, and the play was dedicated to Frederick, prince of Wales, "who was so just as to insist on the tragedy as the first to be brought on" that season (A. Hill, Letters, i. 328-32). Like Thomson's Edward and Eleonora, but less openly, it was directed against the king and Sir Robert Walpole. With Quin as Solyman, and with the leading members of the prince's party and of Pope in the boxes, it achieved a great success, and ran for 14 nights (ib. x. 93). Dodsley, in his edition of the works of Charles Boyle, 4th earl of Orrery, who wrote a piece with the same title, says that Mallet "made his play, by the help of a first minister and some other lucky incidents, as fashionable now as my lord Orrery's was heretofore." In 1740 Mallet published a short Life of Bacon. Shortly afterwards Mallet and Thomson were commanded by the prince to write the masque of Alfred, to celebrate both the birthday of the Princess Augusta and the anniversary of George I's accession. It was played in the gardens of Cliefden, before the Prince and Princess of Wales, on Friday, 1 August 1740, with Quin, Mrs. Horton, and Mrs. Clive in the chief parts. Mallet rapidly grew in favour with the opposition, and was appointed, 27 May 1742, under-secretary to the Prince of Wales, at a salary of 200l. The Duchess of Marlborough having left, in 1744, the sum of 1,000l. to Mallet and Glover, on condition that they would write a life of her husband, Mallet, on Glover's refusal, undertook the work. He never wrote a line, though for many years afterwards he professed to be "eternally fatigued with preparing and arranging materials." In 1745 he made a tour in Holland, and he published, in May 1747, Amyntor and Theodora, or the Hermit. Mallet and Thomson had, through the good offices of George, first baron Lyttelton, been in receipt of a pension of 100l. from the prince, but in 1748 they were deprived of it on account of the displeasure incurred by Lyttelton. Mallet soon found compensation in the patronage of Bolingbroke, to whom he had been at an earlier date introduced by Pope. By Bolingbroke's direction he at once prepared an advertisement to an edition of the Patriot King, published in 1749, in which he attacked the memory of Pope for having clandestinely edited and printed the work in 1738. Mallet had chosen to forget not only Pope's kindnesses, but the fervour which had prompted him to write to Lord Orrery after the poet's death (1 June 1744) — "his person I loved, his worth I know, and shall ever cherish his memory with all the regard of esteem, with all the tenderness of friendship." This mean act involved Mallet in a short pamphlet-war with Pope's friends, but he was rewarded by the gift of Bolingbroke's works, printed and in manuscript, of which he published an edition in 5 vols. in March 1754. Dr. Johnson remarked on this enterprise that Bolingbroke had "spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity," and "left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death."Smith, 427. Private life By his first wife, Susanna, whom he married about 1734, and who died in January 1741–2, he had two children, Charles, and Dorothy, who married a Genoese gentleman named Celesia Celesia, Dorothea. His second wife was Lucy, youngest daughter of Lewis Elstob, steward to the Earl of Carlisle, who brought him a dowry of 10,000l. when he married her, on 7 October 1742. Gibbon, who was "domesticated" with the Mallets from 1758, describes her as "not destitute of wit or learning." She died at Paris on 17 September 1795, aged 79. By her Mallet had two daughters: Lucy, born 1743, who married a Captain Macgregor in the French service; and Arabella, born 1745, who married Captain Williams of the royal engineers. Mallet was small of stature, but well made, though in later years he became very corpulent, being in 1764 "exactly like the shape of a barrel." He was very careful in his dress, "the prettiest drest puppet about town," says Johnson; his conversation was easy and elegant; and he early "cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation, so as to be no longer distinguishable as a Scot." Hume, although he disliked him, appealed to him ‘very earnestly,’ on more than one occasion, for aid in purging his manuscript of Scotticisms. In his actions, rather than in his writings, he showed intense vanity, which was fostered by his second wife. He posed as "a great declaimer in all the London coffee-houses against Christianity," and Hume found his household too studiously sceptical for his taste. His deceit in connection with the ‘Marlborough Memoirs,’ his behaviour to Hume, ‘like a dog in the manger’ (Hume, Letters, ii. 144), the unscrupulous use of his pen in party politics towards the close of his life, and, chief of all, his treatment of the memory of Pope, his friend and patron, are dark blots on an otherwise ‘respectable’ and successful career. Final years In 1751, three years after the death of Thomson, Mallet published a new version of the masque of 1740. Here Alfred was "what he should have been at first — the principal figure in his own masque," and new scenes and songs were added. According to Mallet's account, very little of Thomson's share was retained. It was acted at Drury Lane on 23 Feb. 1750–1, with Garrick in the title-rôle. The masque of Britannia, an appeal to patriotic sentiment on the eve of an outbreak of war with France, followed in 1755. It was produced at Drury Lane on 9 May, when Garrick "spoke the prologue as a drunken sailor." On 19 Jan. 1762–3 Mallet's Elvira was acted at the same theatre during the "half-price riots." Garrick took the part of Don Pedro, the last ‘new character’ in which he was seen; but it was not a success, and it provoked a pamphlet of Critical Strictures by James Boswell and two fellow-Scots. In the interval Mallet had written a few minor pieces, including the ballad of "Edwin and Emma," 1760, and a discreditable party indictment by a ‘Plain Man’ against Admiral Byng, 1757 (ib. ii. 128). He was rewarded in 1763 by Lord Bute, to whom he had given fulsome praise, with the post of inspector of exchequer-book in the outports of London, at a salary of 300l., a sinecure which he held till his death. In the autumn of the following year he joined his wife at Paris, but ill-health compelled him to return to London. His weakness gradually increased, and he died on Sunday, 21 April 1765, "aged 63." He was buried on the 27th in St. George's cemetery, South Audley Street, but no monument remains to mark the spot. Writing Mallet's literary reputation did not live long, and one contemporary at least was not too severe in calling him a ‘whiffler in poetry’ (Cooke, supra). Johnson told Goldsmith that he ‘had talents enough to keep his literary reputation alive as long as he himself lived’ (Boswell, ii. 233), and he has worked out the same idea in his criticism in the ‘Lives’ (iv. 440). His lack of originality justified the sorry joke of the aggrieved Theobald, ‘that there is no more conceit in him than in a mallet’ (edit. of Shakespeare, 1733, Pref. lii); and Hume's dictum, that ‘he was destitute of the pathetic,’ would not be difficult to prove. At times his lines show the cadence of Pope's verse (e.g. ‘Verbal Criticism’), and his tragedies echo the fuller rhythm of his friend's ‘Seasons;’ but his motif is always poor. His early ballad of ‘William and Margaret,’ and the claim set up on his behalf to the authorship of the national ode of ‘Rule Britannia,’ alone give him any title to posthumous recognition. But ‘Rule Britannia’, which appeared in its first form in the ‘Alfred’ of 1740, although ascribed to Mallet, is probably by Thomson. In the Advertisement to the masque, in the edition of his works published in 1759, Mallet, with studied vagueness and perhaps with some insincerity, says: ‘I was obliged to reject a great deal of what I myself had written in the other: neither could I retain, of my friend’s part, more than three or four single speeches, and a part of one song.’ A collation of the versions, in the light of that statement, may appear to favour Mallet’s claims; but to this, at best an inference, is opposed the fact that the song appeared during his lifetime with Thomson’s name affixed. Besides the works mentioned above, Mallet published a collection of ‘Poems on Several Occasions’ in 1743, and a second under the same title in 1762, and. at Smollett’s request, he contributed to the ‘Critical Review’ (Dinsdale, p. 46). Recognition On 11 January 1726 he received an honorary degree of M.A. from the University of Aberdeen, ostensibly for an English poem in imitation of Ker's "Donaides." A collected edition of The Works of D. Mallet, Esq. appeared in 3 vols. in 1759. His poems have been reprinted by Johnson (vol. liii.), Bell (vol. lxxiii.), Anderson (vol. ix.), Park (vol. xxix.), and Chalmers (vol. xiv.) An annotated edition of his Ballads and Songs, by F. Dinsdale, was published in 1857. Publications Poetry *''The Excursion: A poem, in two books''. London: J. Walthoe, 1728. *''Of Verbal Criticism: An epistle to Mr. Pope, occasioned by Theobald's Shakespear and Bentley's Milton''. London [Edinburgh: Thomas Ruddiman, for Lawton Gilliver, 1733. *''Verses Presented to the Prince of Orange, on his visiting Oxford'' (with Walter Harte). London: Lawton Gilliver, 1734. *''Poems on Several Occasions''. London: A. Millar, 1743, 1762. *''Amyntor and Theodora; or, The hermit: A poem in three cantos''. London: Paul Vaillant, 1747. *''Verses on the Death of Lady Anson''. London: 1760. *''Edwin and Emma''. Birmingham, UK: John Baskerville, for A. Millar, London, 1760; London: Taylor, 1776. *''Poetical Works''. Edinburgh: Apollo Press, by the Martins, 1780. *''Poetical Works''. London: C. Cooke (Cooke's edition), 1796. *''Ballads and Songs'' (edited by Frederick T. Dinsdale). London: Bell & Daldy, 1857. Plays *''Eurydice: A tragedy''. London: A. Millar, 1731. *''Mustapha: A tragedy''. London: A. Millar, 1739; Edinburgh: J. Robinson, 1774. *''Alfred: A masque'' (with James Thomson). London: A. Millar, 1740 **revised edition, London: A. Millar, 1751 **as Alfred the Great: An oratorio (with music by Dr. Arne). London: T. Lowndes, 1770. *''Britannia: A masque''. London: A. Millar, 1755. *''Elvira: A tragedy''. London: A. Millar, 1763. *''The Plays'' (edited by Felicity Nussbaum). New York: Garland, 1980. Non-fiction *''The Life of Francis Bacon''. London: A. Millar, 1740. *''A Congratulatory Letter to Selim: On the three letters to the Whigs''. London: M. Cooper, 1748. *''Observations on the Twelfth Article of War''. London: W. Owen, 1757. *''Memoirs of the Life and Ministerial Conduct, of the Late Lord Visc. Bolingbroke''. London: R. Baldwin, 1752. Collected editions *''Works''. London: A. Millar, 1743. *''Works''. (3 volumes), London: A. Millar / P. Vaillant, 1759. Edited *Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism / On the Idea of a Patriot King. London: A. Millar, 1749. *Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Works. (5 volumes), London: 1754. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:David Mallet 1765, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Aug. 13, 2016. See also *List of British poets *List of English-language playwrights References * . Wikisource, Web, Aug. 13, 2016. Notes External links ;Poems *David Mallet at PoemHunter (3 poems) *David Mallet (1705 ca.-1765) info & 4 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830 *David Mallet at Poetry Nook (42 poems) ;About *David Malloch, author of Elvira at JamesBoswell.info *David Mallet at Lives of Scottish Poets.*''David Mallet, Anglo-Scot: Poetry, patronage, and politics in the age of union'' * Mallet, David Category:1705 births Category:1765 deaths Category:18th-century Scottish people Category:18th-century writers Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:Anglo-Scots Category:Scottish dramatists and playwrights Category:Scottish editors Category:Scottish historians Category:Scottish Jacobites Category:Scottish poets Category:Scottish political writers Category:Scottish spies Category:Geordie songwriters Category:18th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets